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Ne-w York State Education Department 



EDUCATION IN ENGLAND 



ADDRESS 

BY 

WHITELAW REID LL.I). D.C.L. 



BEFORE THK ASSOCIATED ACADEMIC PRINCIPALS OF NICW YORK AND THE K E* 
YORK STATE TEACHERS ASSOCIATION, AT SVUACUSE, N. Y. 



December 26, 1907 



H42»r-Ja8-35oo 




STATE OF NEW YORK 

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

Regents of the University 
With years when terms expire 

1913 Whitelaw Reid M.A. LL.D.D.C.L. Chancellor New York 

191 7 St Clair McKelway M.A. LL.D. Vice Chan- 

cellor Brooklyn 

1908 Daniel Beach Ph.D. LL.D Watkins 

1914 Pliny T. Sexton LL.B. LL.D Palmyra 

1912 T. Guilford Smith M.A, C.E. LL.D. . . . Buffalo 

1918 William Nottingham M.A. Ph.D. LL.D. . Syracuse 

1910 Charles A. Gardiner Ph.D. L.H.D. LL.D. D.C.L. New York 

1915 Albert Vander Veer M.D. M.A. Ph.D. LL.D. Albany 

1911 Edward Lauterbach M.A. LL.D. . . . New York 

1909 Eugene A. Philbin LL.B. LL.D. . , . New York 

1916 LuciAN L. Shedden LL.B Plattsburg 

Commissioner of Education 

Andrew S. Draper LL.B. LL.D. 

Assistant Commissioners 

Howard J. Rogers M.A, LL.D. First Assistant 
Edward J. Goodwin Lit.D. L.H.D. Second Assistant 
Augustus S. Downing M.A. Pd.D. LL.D. Third Assistant 

Director of State Library 

Edwin H. Anderson M.A. 

Director of Science and State Museum 

John M. Clarke Ph.D. LL.D. 

Chiefs of Divisions 

Administration, Harlan H. Horner B.A 

Attendance, James D. Sullivan 

Educational Extension, William R. Eastman M.A. M.L.S 

Examinations, Charles F. Wheelock B.S. LL.D. 

Inspections, Frank H. Wood M.A. 

Law, Thomas E. Finegan M.A. 

School Libraries, Charles E. Fitch L.H.D. 

Statistics, Hiram C. Case 

Visual Instruction. DeLancey M. Ellis 



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V-^K 



EDUCATION IN ENGLAND 



It has been represented to me that this body of practical and 
prominent teachers of the Empire State would be interested in 
some account of what schools and teachers in England are doing. 
Nothing could be more natural. From the English came our 
first educational ideas ; to them we long looked, in colonial days 
and later, for the highest types of collegiate and university edu- 
cation ; from them we got the religious control so long felt in so 
many of our schools, as it is still felt in theirs. More important 
still; from them came the fervid, almost fanatical belief in the 
necessity of education, which we, in accordance with our cus- 
tom, broadened far beyond their original views, and have clung 
to through two centuries, and over a continent and many islands, 
with a tenacity which if it were not American might be called 
truly British. Plainly the educational fever runs in the blood! 

I shall speak to you, then, briefly, of some details of past and 
present English educational work. But I shall do no violence 
to the maxims either of Dogberry or Don Quixote ; shall enter 
upon no comparisons with our own work in similar fields. There 
are two reasons. First, all comparisons between countries are 
apt to be odious. Secondly, unless far more time were taken 
than is at our disposal tonight for a careful statement of vary- 
ing circumstances, all comparisons are sure to be unfair. 

In any consideration of English education for the masses, it 
must be remembered that a national system for it did not exist 
before 1870, and could not be said to have reached good working 
order before 1892. The government gave no assistance what- 
ever for elementary schools (i. e. for what we should call 
common schools, or primary schools) until 1834, when the 
House of Commons made its first appropriation of £20,000. This 
was to be used solely for new school buildings. Not till 1839 
did the government make an appropriation for more direct aid 
to popular education. 

Yet meantime England had somehow trained Shakespeare and 
John Milton. She had also trained the Pilgrims, who began in the 
Colony of Massachusetts Bay that common school system which 
is now the pride of every American. 



Until William E. Forsler in 1870 carried through the bill to 
provide for public elementary education in England and Wales, 
the government itself could hardly be said to have taken much 
share in real educational provision for the poorer classes, and 
not a great deal even for the middle classes. Nevertheless, such 
as their system was, and for what it undertook, it had long been 
of rare excellence. It had admirably accomplished — for a cer- 
tain number — the highest aim of education; it had been a 
wonderful developer of character. Public schools, Eton and 
Harrow, Winchester and Rugby, and many another leading up 
to and cooperating with the two universities, had been such a 
nursery of statesmen, of soldiers and sailors and great procon- 
suls and civil administrators throughout the Empire on which 
the sun never sets, as the world had never before seen. It may 
have been a fanciful notion, attributed to the Iron Duke, that 
Waterloo was won at Eton, but certainly the secret of Anglo- 
Saxon superiority in the 17th and i8th centuries was largely to 
be found in the British schools and universities. 

The secret of some other things was to be found in the 
chaotic and undeveloped state of popular elementary education. 
The long reign of Queen Victoria had but recently begun, when 
in February 1839, Lord John Russell wrote to the Lord Lans- 
downe of the day: "I have received Her Majesty's commands 
to make a communication to Your Lordship on a subject of the 
greatest importance. Her Majesty has observed with deep 
concern the want of instruction which is still observable among 
the poorer classes of her subjects. All the inquiries which have 
been made show a deficiency in the general education of the 
people, which is not in accordance with the character of a civil- 
ized and Christian nation." Continuing to speak for Her 
Majesty, Lord John went on to specify a lack of qualified 
teachers, imperfect teaching, deficient inspection of the work 
done by the schools of both the established church and the Non- 
Conformists, and finally the neglect of the subject by Parliament. 

Four years later, inspectors reported that the teaching in 
these schools was so bad that only half the scholars learned to 
read and only a quarter of them to write. And four years after 
that, now almost in the middle of the 19th century, Macaulay, 
in a speech in the House of Commons, gave the reason : " How 
many of these teachers," he said, " are the refuse of other call- 
ings, discarded servants or ruined tradesmen, who can not do a 
sum of three ; who would not be able to write a common letter ; 
who do not know whether the earth is a cube or a sphere ; and 



can not tell whether Jerusalem is in Asia or America; whom no 
gentleman would trust with the key of his cellar, and no trades- 
man would send of a message." 

Even as late as 1861, about the time our Civil War broke out, 
the Newcastle Commission reported almost as unsatisfactory a 
state of affairs. It considered that only about one fourth of the 
children in the schools got a tolerable facility in reading, writing 
and arithmetic — the great majority leaving school between the 
ages of 10 and 11. It told of a public" school with such primitive 
facilities that, when the writing lesson was given, four boys were 
required to carry ink bottles up and down between the desks, 
so that each boy in turn might dip his pen in the ink. And 
finally this commission said concerning the private school 
teachers in one part of London: " None are too old, too poor, 
too ignorant, too feeble, too sickly, too unqualified to regard 
themselves and to be regarded as fit for school keeping. Do- 
mestic servants out of place, discharged barmaids, vendors of 
toys and lollypops, keepers of small eating houses, of mangles or 
of small lodging houses, needle women who take in plain or 
slop work, milliners, consumptive patients in an advanced stage, 
cripples almost bedridden, persons of at least doubtful temper- 
ance, outdoor paupers, men and women of 70 or 80 years of age, 
persons who spell badly, who scarcely write and who can not 
cipher at all — such are some of the teachers, not in remote 
rural districts but in the heart of London." In recalling this 
and other accounts of the time it is well for you to bear in mind 
that in all countries reformers have sharp voices and use many 
staccato notes. 

But Matthew Arnold was not of that class; yet he reported 
in 1869 that nearly half the children he examined had been less 
than one year at school, and half the rest for less than two years. 

Now, to end this statement of earlier conditions, which has 
been really necessary to a comprehension of the present situa- 
tion, it should be added that the schools thus described might 
be either purely private enterprises, sometimes aided a little by 
local taxation, or might be under the management either of the 
established church of England, or of the British and Foreign 
School Society, representing the bulk of the Non-Conformist 
churches, or of sundry minor religious organizations. By far 
the greater number were under some distinct and positive sec- 
tarian control. Great sums had been invested by the different 
denominations, in school buildings and in supporting schools, 



when there was little other support for them. Their work had 
come gradually to be supplemented not only by fees but by 
allowances from the local taxation, and finally from the govern- 
ment. Thus the churches controlled the schools : the local tax- 
payers had a pecuniary interest in them, the parents who paid 
fees had, and finally the general government had. 

As would be naturally inferred, the churches that built them 
up insisted on religious teaching. In the case of the established 
church this meant the Bible, church hymns, the. church catechism, 
and particularly the doctrine of the Trinity; and at first pupils 
coming into such a school from Non-Conformist families or 
Agnostic or Jewish families, or from aggressive unbelievers, had 
to receive the same instruction. Here, of course, was one open- 
ing for trouble ; and another was to be found among local tax- 
payers, not connected with the Church of England, or perhaps 
with any church. With Non-Conformist schools the difiiculty 
was somewhat different. They were disposed to be content 
with what was known as Cowper-Temple teaching; i. e. as legally 
defined in the Act of 1870, without " religious catechism or re- 
ligious formulary, distinctive of any particular denomination." 
Subject to that restriction, whatever religious instruction the 
local authorities desired could be given. This Cowper-Temple 
teaching, though apt to be satisfactory to the majority of Non- 
Conformists, did not satisfy the established church, or the un- 
believers, and might not always satisfy the local taxpayers. As 
a matter of fact, however, it evoked little protest, excepting from 
the established church. 

Now it is easy for an American to say that all this confusion 
and dissatisfaction could be avoided by confining the public 
schools to secular instruction, and leaving religious training to 
the church and the family. But it is not so easy to show how 
vested rights, going back often for a century or more, can thus 
be preserved; nor is it easy to show how the churches, which 
invested and were encouraged to invest their money and labors 
for one purpose, are to be reconciled to the arbitrary diversion of 
their investment, long afterwards, to another purpose. Between 
1869 and 1876, houses for over a million school children were 
erected by denominational agencies, and the total of voluntary 
subscriptions for that purpose in that time was over £3,000,000. 
Besides the claim in equity which on the basis of such facts the 
churches assert, it is probably true that the majority of the 
English people, however much they may differ as to details, and 
to whatever rival sects they belong, would be still more discon- 



tented if all religious teaching were to disappear from their 
schools. There is increasing impatience, no doubt, with the con- 
flicting demands and disputes of the churches, a growing tend- 
ency to say " a plague on both your houses ; let the tax-paid 
education be purely secular!" But in spite of such outbursts, I 
believe the decided majority of the taxpayers still think religious 
instruction a necessity for the rising generation, and do not think 
they would have adequate security for getting it, if it were ex- 
cluded from the tax-supported schools. Until 1870 the daily 
reading of the Bible was an essential condition of getting any 
government aid for an elementary school, and it is still habitually 
read in most of the schools, even where not required by any 
authority. 

The leading English lines of thought on the subject finally 
found expression in two organizations which have contended 
for many years. The Birmingham League, made notable to us 
by the vice chairmanship of Mr Joseph Chamberlain, if not also 
by the secretaryship of Mr Jesse Collings, advocated a national 
system of education, to be compulsory on all, free to all, and 
unsectarian, but not to exclude undenominational religious in- 
struction. The National Education Union represented the 
established church and was organized to oppose the efforts of 
the Birmingham Union, and hold on to the church hymns and 
the church catechism. To this day the contest rages. The 
most hotly fought measure of the present Liberal government 
was Mr Birrell's bill (passed after long debate in the Commons 
and thrown out by the Lords), which attempted a considerable 
advance towards the ideals of the Birmingham League. The 
way in which the other side regarded it was hinted in the 
epithet by which many of the London newspapers had the habit 
of describing it — Bir-religion. 

During the popular debates over this measure, I received a 
letter from the editor of The Salisbury Times, besides several 
from private sources, all calling my attention to a startling state- 
ment made in a speech on the subject at a political meeting in 
Salisbury by a well known and perfectly reputable Conservative 
candidate, to this effect : 

In Australia, since religious teaching was abolished in the day 
schools, crime has increased 75 per cent. In the United States in 
1850 there was one crime to every 3422 of the population, but 
today there is i criminal for every 300. In Denver, out of 10,000 
boys, 2000 of them have been in jail. Now, we do not want the 
same thing to happen in Great Britain. 



I was asked if these statements were not misleading, and I 
prepared such a reply as careful inquiry seemed to show that the 
facts warranted.^ But there was at the moment no such storm 
center in British politics as this religious phase of the edu- 
cational question; and on second thoughts it appeared wiser for 
a diplomat to obey the old rule to avoid getting in any way in- 
volved in the domestic debates of the country to which he was 
accredited — even if it should be at the temporary cost of not 
promptly correcting misapprehensions about his own country. 

Now, it would have been easy, first, to call attention to the 
curious fact that the statements were strikingly like some unwise 
stories published from time to time, some only a few years 
earlier, in American reviews of high standing, concerning an 
alleged increase of juvenile crime in London, following the ex- 
tension there of the free school system. Next, as to the allega- 
tions concerning the United States, it might have been said at 
once that they were inexact, and that, even if they had been 
accurate, they would have needed to be made more complete 
to avoid giving an inaccurate impression. 

They were inexact because the latest census statistics avail- 
able, those furnished by the Census OfiEice in 1904, show that 
instead of i criminal to every 300 of population, there is only 
I to every 990; also that there has been a reduction between 
1890 and 1904, not merely in the proportion of criminals to total 
population, but also in the actual number of criminals, in s^'ite 
of the increase of population ; and finally that the Census Office 
believes that its own returns of criminals before 1880 were im- 
perfect, making the number previous to that date too small, and 
consequently exaggerating the increase in the next decades. 

Next, even if these allegations had been exact, they would 
still have given an inaccurate impression anyway. It is 
obviously misleading to point to the number of criminals and 
say that is the work of your educational system, without show'- 
ing whether these criminals have ever been under the system. 
Plainly you must know what proportion of the whole population 
has not been taught at all in our schools, and next what pro- 
portion of the criminals that illiterate part furnishes. Thus in 
the largest states, New York and Pennsylvania, the wholly illit- 

^ Valuable aid in securing the facts was kindly furnished by Dr Draper, the 
N. Y. Commissioner of Education, by Mr Eugene A. Philbin of the Board 
of Regents, and by Prof. Elmer E. Brown, National Commissioner of 
Education. The reports of his predecessor, Dr W. T. Harris, also shed much 
light on the subject. 



erate are only 4 per cent of the population, yet they furnish 33 
per cent of the prisoners. If you add to the wholly illiterate in 
those states the others enumerated as very deficient, you find that 
the two classes furnish 60 per cent of the prisoners. 

Again, it is obviously misleading to use statistics of crime 
as evidence of a bad effect of the educational system, without 
mentioning that, while the educational S3'Stem has been steadily 
extending, the number of criminals in the same period has been 
shrinking — having been in the whole United States 132 to the 
100,000 of population in 1890, and only loi in 1894. 

And again, it is obviously misleading to hold the educational 
system responsible for an increase of prisoners clearly caused 
by changes in the laws. Thus, in the state of Massachusetts, in 
a period of 35 years (between 1850 and 1885), commitments by 
the courts increased, yet crimes against persons and property 
rapidly decreased, and all crimes excepting intemperance de- 
creased. Now, more rigid laws against drunkenness and the 
more frequent arrests that followed can hardly with fairness be 
charged to the growth of the educational system ! 

As to the Denver case I know less, but from the report of the 
Juvenile Court of Denver for 1904 it appears, not that one boy 
in five was sent to jail each year, but that in the six years 
previous to the establishment of the court about one boy in 
seven out of the total population of boys between 10 and 16 
years of age had been, as the court said, under the old system 
"thrust into jail." In the two years after the establishment of 
the court, it tried but 719 cases and committed only 44. 

Whether religious instruction should be enforced upon every- 
body in English schools is purely a question for English people. 
We have no right and no disposition to meddle with it; and I 
venture to think the facts just cited prove that there is nothing 
in either our educational or our criminal record to make it need- 
ful for any of them to import us into it. 

And yet I can not help feeling that on the general subject we 
might profitably take a hint from the old country. Whatever 
else we may say about the English schools they do turn out 
well behaved, orderly boys and girls, respectful to those set over 
them, grounded in the morals of Christian civilization, with an 
instinctive sense of obedience to law and a becoming regard for 
the authorities that represent it. Would we be any the worse 
off if we had more of these qualities here? i\Iay it not happen 



that in our effort to keep all questions of religion and morals in 
what we consider their proper place, they may in reality be left 
without any place in the training of a good many children? If 
the interest of the Republic requires that every child should be 
compelled to learn to read its laws, does not the same interest as 
imperatively require that every child should be taught, and 
should be unable to escape being taught, the absolute necessity 
of respect for those laws and of prompt and dutiful obedience 
to the officers of the law? Does not the interest of the Re- 
public further demand that the coming citizens shall have some 
idea of our old beliefs in the Fatherhood of God and the brother- 
hood of man, or at least shall be thoroughly grounded in the 
great principles of the moral law, without which neither ordered 
liberty nor civilization itself can exist? 

If English schools, according to our ideas, go too far, in 
teaching creeds, may we not be going too far the other way, 
in some parts of the country at least, in excluding altogether, 
or in giving too little space to teaching unsectarian religion and 
morals, to enforcing respect for authority, and to training the 
habit of mind that secures unhesitating obedience to law, and to 
its officers? In London the policeman, the representative of 
law, often controls the biggest and angriest crowd by lifting his 
hand, in cases where the New York policeman has to lift his 
club. Nay, here the giddy chauffeur, for a single example out 
of many, gayly snaps his fingers at the uplifted club, and has to 
be run down on a motorcycle. Even then, when caught, he is 
apt to tell the presumptuous policeman he means to have him 
" broken " for his pains. Such a threat in London would rail- 
road him to a long term in jail. The mere failure to stop, the 
moment a policeman lifts his hand, is generally in England un- 
thinkable ; the imagination is staggered to conceive the punish- 
ment that might befall the foolhardy person who should venture 
on such unprecedented lawlessness. Some cause has produced 
this diff'erence. Is it improbable that early training in a school 
that could be nowise escaped by the growing boy had something 
to do with it? 

It has been seen that even yet, to use a Hibernicism, the 
English system of elementary education is notably unsystematic. 
Besides purely private schools, sometimes receiving govern- 
ment aid, and some old public schools, having endowments 
running back for a century or more and also receiving govern- 
ment aid, there are " provided schools," i. e. council schools, or, 



in American parlance, common schools ; and " nonprovided 
schools," that is, voluntary schools, largely under church con- 
trol. The two classes last named had accommodation in 1906 
for about 33^ million scholars each. Both receive aid from local 
taxation and also from the state. They had between them an 
average attendance last year of S/i millions, or over 86 per cent 
of the registration. To support the work of elementary educa- 
tion thus distributed, aside from other resources, there were 
public grants of nearly 113^ million pounds — say 57 million 
dollars. 

To indicate the nature of instruction thus given we may take 
the London " provided schools " as favorable examples. The 
curriculum, as first fixed by the board in 1870, included instruc- 
tion in morality and religion, reading, writing, arithmetic, geog- 
raphy, English grammar, English history, elementary physical 
science, elementary social economy, drawing, singing, mensura- 
tion for boys, needle work for girls, and physical exercises, be- 
sides a few discretionary subjects. By 1902 the latter had been 
materially enlarged, and the head teacher now had the liberty 
of selecting, according to the capacity and desire of the pupils, 
from algebra, geometry, mechanics, animal physiology, botany, 
chemistry, hygiene, bookkeeping, shorthand, Latin, French and 
German. Nearly all upper class boys also attend special centers 
for manual training, and upper class girls for domestic economy. 

American critics of tendencies in their own schools sometimes 
object to the " fads and frills " which, as they say, keep the 
children from learning " the three R's." It will be observed that 
the London elementary schools likewise provide for a good many 
so called " frills." But it must be noted that these are not per- 
mitted to take the place of the essentials. Whatever else a Lon- 
don child may learn at a " provided school," he must and does 
learn to read, write and cipher. Two out of the three at least 
he generally learns remarkably well. Nothing is apt to strike 
an American more, when he comes to know the product of Eng- 
lish elementary schools, than their thoroughness in these essen- 
tials. I have rarely seen a domestic servant who did not have 
a fairly good handwriting, spell with more accuracy than some 
of our own misguided college professors, and compose a clear 
letter, well expressed, in civil phrases, not offensive by an un- 
warranted familiarity or wanton assurance in demanding the 
time of a stranger, not verbose or slangy; in fact likely, by its 
appearance and manner at least, to create a good impression. 



Would that we could say as much for all the graduates of our 
colleges. 

In most of the London schools there are three departments, 
those for boys, girls and infants. An average number for the 
three would be about looo. There are also schools in which the 
sexes are not separated. About half the teachers in 1869 were 
women and girls, by 1900 they had become three fourths. Cer- 
tified masters of schools are paid about £129 per annum, say 
$640; and certified mistresses about two thirds as much. Pupil 
teachers are put in training, on application and favorable re- 
ports, at 14 years of age ; and after a year, study only half the day, 
teach the other half and are paid a graded salary which at the 
end of three years more, rises to £30 for boys and £24 for girls. 
Women are eligible for educational committees, and their ser- 
vice seems to be popular. 

The general limit for compulsory attendance at elementary 
schools was 13 years, but the local authorities now have the 
power to raise it to 14, and the prevailing tendency is towards 
an exercise of this power. The penalty on parents for neglect is 
£1 with costs. The pupils are graded by various standards, 
known as standard i, the low^est, and so on up to standards 5 and 
6, which represent the highest elementary work, and standard 7, 
which denotes the distinct extension of the work into the second- 
ary field. 

Discipline in the schools is generally very well maintained ; 
pupils of both sexes are early taught obedience, courtesy and 
respect — sometimes even yet in the old way ! Persuasion and 
kindness are first tried ; the effort is to lead the pupil by rewards 
rather than to drive him by punishments. But the hard-headed 
local authorities have generally not the remotest intention of 
spoiling the child in order to spare the rod, and the traditional 
cane is still served out to the head masters and the head mis- 
tresses along with the other school supplies. It is not often 
used, and never without care and some thought of possible legal 
reprisals, but it is there and it is used if needs must. Per- 
haps the lad's opinion of Archbishop Temple, at Rugby, may be 
taken as the ordinary schoolboy's general notion about this ap- 
plication of discipline, when it does come : " He's a beast, but 
a just beast." 

There is a marked tendency in most of the elementary schools 
to freshen the work, take it away from the old routine methods 
and make it a real process of drawing out the latent capacities 



13 

of the child and encouraging it to think, to feel its own way, and 
to learn for itself. There are many illustrations and experi- 
ments, occasional excursions and object lessons. Efforts are 
made to use the successes of pupils as an abiding stimulus for 
the schools, and the permanent tablet on the wall serving as an 
" honor board " is a frequent feature. The local authorities 
sometimes offer a valuable picture as a prize to a class or a 
school that in some way distinguishes itself, and with a tiirift 
almost Yankee in its subtlety gain by what they give, since the 
picture remains as the permanent adornment of the school- 
house ! 

( 

In i86i Matthew Arnold, after inspecting foreign school sys- 
tems, returned to report to the Royal Commission on Endowed 
Schools, which had sent him out, with the appeal : " Organize 
your secondary and your superior education." Ten years later 
Professor Huxley, in the first London School Board, urged an 
arrangement by which a passage could be secured for children 
of superior ability from the elementary schools, to schools in 
which they could obtain a higher instruction. No educational 
system, he said — in a notable speech, now familiar, I thini:, to 
most American educators — no such system would be worthy 
the name of a national system, " unless it established a great 
educational ladder, the bottom of which should be in the gutter 
and the top in the university, on which every child who had the 
strength to climb might, by using that strength, reach the place 
for which nature intended him." 

But in 1907 the appeal of Matthew Arnold is not yet fully 
answered, the dream of Professor Huxle)^ not yet fully realized. 
Unsystematic as the primary education has been found, sec- 
ondary education is still more so. There are in London " higher 
grade schools," " organized science schools," and " higher ele- 
mentary schools." Some of these are merely the highest class 
of elementary schools, reaching up into subjects proper to the 
first years in secondary education ; some others represent a 
rather confused effort to promote secondary education, technical 
education, and commercial art education side by side; some of 
them give efficient instruction in chemistry, physics, electricity, 
physiology, botany, French, German, algebra, geometry, trigo- 
nometry, English literature and history. It is not clear that 
many of them enable their students to pass on to the universities. 
A " higher grade " school at Leeds has a superior record in that 



14 

respect, 93 of its pupils having matriculated at London Uni- 
versity, and 65 having taken university degrees. 

There is another development of secondary education directly 
from the elementary schools, generally more practical in its na- 
ture, and tending often to scientific or technical courses. This 
is the one stimulated by a system of scholarships, junior, inter- 
mediate and senior, offered by the London County Council and 
open to competition by the pupils in the elementary schools. 
About 600 junior scholarships are thus given in a year to boys 
and girls under 13 years of age, and nearly all go to pupils of 
the council schools. These keep the children at a higher grade 
council school or at a secondary school for two years, pay fees 
where there are any, and give the pupil for his maintenance for 
the two years an allowance of £20; but the parents of the chil- 
dren receiving them must have an income less than £150, say 
less than $750. The boy or girl who gains one of these scholar- 
ships gets tuition one year beyond the usual 14 year limit, and is 
then able to compete for an intermediate scholarship. These 
again are open to any under 16, whose parents have an income 
of less than £400 a year ; and when won, secure any fees in sec- 
ondary schools, together with an allowance of £55 for main- 
tenance for two years. There are about 100 of them a year for 
all London, and they practically denote the high-water mark of 
council school education. There are still, however, seven or 
eight senior scholarships a year, and these carry the successful 
contestants for three years at a university, with tuition fees and 
a maintenance of £30 a year. This, it will be observed, consti- 
tutes a genuine scheme of state supported secondary education. 
It is not open to all who may have passed through the lower 
classes and feel like keeping on. But it is open to the selected 
few who have shown special qualifications for a higher training, 
and whose parents are poor; and to these most hopeful and most 
deserving children of the Empire their government extends not 
merely free tuition but free support. 

Those seeking the old universities, and many of those seeking 
scientific courses at the new ones, still resort, if they can, either 
to schools conducted for private profit, or to the public schools, 
so called, i. e. endowed schools like Harrow, Rugby, West- 
minster, St Paul's, Manchester Grammar School and 30 or 35 
more. Many of these are ancient foundations, and they have 
borne a vital relation to some of the proudest pages of English 
history. At least two of them, Winchester and Eton, were well 
endowed for the time and in successful operation before the dis- 



15 

covery of America. A much larger number were established 
before the colonies at Jamestown and Plymouth were ; and most 
of the more noted ones before our Declaration of Independence. 
These schools belong therefore to our history, too. They recall 
to us as well as to Englishmen, in their scrupulously guarded 
rolls, the successive generations of eminent men, whose achieve- 
ments are a part of our inheritance. They make alive again the 
proud records above the sacred dust of myriads of the great 
departed all over the land, from stately cathedrals to the quiet 
churchyard of the remotest hamlet. This sacred dust it was that 
gave the inspiration to Oliver Wendell Holmes's eulogy of Eng- 
land and her illustrious dead, and justified his vivid outburst: 

One half her soil has walked the rest, 
In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages. 

These public schools are in general splendidly healthy and 
useful yet; within their field and for their purposes unsurpassed 
in the educational work of the world. But their field, until 
recent years, has been almost exclusively the humanities ; and 
their aim, senior wranglerships and double firsts in the uni- 
versities, the front benches in the House of Commons, and re- 
sponsible places all around the world in the administration of 
the Empire, or in their most esteemed services, the army, the 
navy and the church. Till 1851 mathematics was not compul- 
sory at Eton, nor French till 1862. Natural science was scarcely 
noticed. 

An English educational writer has unfairly said that " Eng- 
land is the country where dead systems live." A student of her 
educational history might be tempted to accept that judgment 
if he looked merely to the fact that it was only as late as 1895, 
and after the notable report of Mr James Bryce (now His 
Majesty's ambassador to the United States) on the best methods 
of establishing a well organized system of secondary education 
in England, that a central organization was created to coordinate 
all these previous divergent and unregulated schools which 
furnish the links between the elementary schools below and the 
universities above, as well as the technical and scientific schools 
that ought to be above. Before that date the most considerable 
part of the secondary education work was under the control of 
the Charity Commission ! The Science and Art Department had 
been administering the newer plans to meet the special demand 
for technical instruction and had the disposition of an income 
for this purpose of nearly a million pounds (5 million dollars) 



i6 

per annum. The Education Department had charge of the ele- 
mentary schools, and, as has been seen, had developed from these 
some interesting advances into the secondary field. At last in 
1900 a board of education was created, which took over the sec- 
ondary educational work of the Charity Commission, of the 
Science and Art Department and of the Educational Department. 

The work thus finally coordinated had reached great propor- 
tions. In 1892 the Charity Commissioners reported the educa- 
tional endowments in England alone, available for secondary 
education, as producing an income of over £697,000 a year, say 
3>4 million dollars — not to reckon at all the value of their build- 
ings and sites. In 1897 the Educational Department made a 
census of English secondary schools. Its returns were thought 
to be vitiated by including many not really entitled to rank as 
secondary schools; but it reported 6209 of them, with pupils 
numbering almost 10 in the thousand of the whole population. 
The Science and Art Department received the customs and ex- 
cise money (popularly " the whisky money ") and from this 
fund technical schools were given nearly £864,000 in 1900, while 
the sum raised for the same purpose by rates (local taxes) 
amounted to iio6,ooo more, say in all over 4^ million dollars. 
Under the latest legislation this goes to the county councils, and 
the councils of county boroughs and of urban districts. It must 
be spent on secondary education. They have authority to raise 
more by local rates, but this in the case of counties must not 
exceed a two pence rate. 

At present the regulations forbid teaching more than 35 
scholars together at one time. They permit fees that may be 
approved by the board, but require that one fourth of the school 
places be open without fees to pupils from elementary schools, 
who pass a satisfactory entrance examination. The number of 
such schools in England and Wales recognized by the board and 
given state aid was 689, in the years 1905-6, and the numiber of 
pupils was 94,689. 

As early as 1895 the feeling that general secondary education 
was in danger of being neglected in the rush for scientific or 
technical or trade training, took shape in the form of a require- 
ment for compulsory literary and commercial instruction. At 
the same time religious instruction is not made compulsory, and 
only nonsectarian instruction is permitted. 

I have not mentioned Scotch or Irish schools. The systems 
are different. There is only time to note that as to Scotland 
general popular education began early and has been thorough, 



17 

almost universal and highly successful; while as to Ireland the 
religious question has been even more controlling and more em- 
barrassing than in England. In all three there is more than 
ever before an acceptance of the idea tersely expressed by Presi- 
dent Roosevelt to Mr Moseley, that while education alone may 
not make a nation it would surely be ruined without it. 

Attendance at English elementary and secondary schools is 
still apt to stop at the age of 14, if not earlier, but the tendency 
begins to be toward a longer stay. Sports are still an absorb- 
ing part of the school work, and interest in them is almost as 
necessary for the teacher as scholarship. The teachers are not 
so apt to show individuality and energy as they are to be careful 
and pertinacious. Much attention has been paid to the training 
of teachers of late years, but the system of " pupil teachers " 
has still to eke out the supply. In the great cities there is an 
enormous and interesting development of evening schools. 
Trade schools are increasingly numerous and popular. In the 
great technical schools there is a noticeable absence of pupils 
who seek easy electives, and are there chiefly for the degree. 
The v/ork is often not very rapid, but it is apt to be thorough. 
■ In all these directions the admonition of the Prince of Wales on 
his return from his eastern trip has been heard, and England has 
" waked up." 

It will have been noted that in elementary schools the pre- 
vailing tendency of late years has been toward sense-training, 
object lessons and manual employment. So among secondary 
schools the tendency has been toward studies fitting for practical 
scientific, or manufacturing and commercial life. Both are more 
democratic than the historic public schools ; and there begins to 
be a greater mingling of classes in the more recent secondary 
schools, in the scientific technological schools, and in the newer uni- 
versities to which they lead. 

Naturally, then, the chief new development of educational ac- 
tivity has been in the expansion or creation of advanced insti- 
tutions to carry on this practical training beyond the secondary 
stage. Until less than a century ago, there were only two uni- 
versities in England and Wales. Now there are 10. Practically 
all the new ones yield the preeminence in the old classical, mathe- 
matical, and philosophic training to Oxford and Cambridge, 
while they strive to occupy more thoroughly the less developed 
field of scientific and technological work. Then there are 23 
technical institutions in England and Wales, recognized by the 



i8 

Board of Education, and 231 schools of art applied to the in- 
dustries. 

The universities have been slowly led to examinations for the 
various kinds of secondary schools, some of which serve as leav- 
ing examinations for the schools and others as matriculation 
examinations for the universities, though often used by the recip- 
ients for other purposes. Oxford and Cambridge took up this 
work near the middle of the last century, first separately, then 
in a joint board. Subsequently London University undertook it 
on a large scale, and Durham, Victoria and Birmingham have 
moved in the same direction. The City and Guilds of London 
Institute also held examinations for technical schools and classes 
throughout the country. 

University work proper is beyond the limits of what 3'ou are 
considering at these meetings ; but a word in closing might be 
given to the Rhodes scholarships at Oxford. We have almost a 
hundred young American graduates there, distributed through 
the colleges of that venerable and illustrious university. They 
are chosen on examination, two from each state and territory; 
they are given free the best the university can ofifer through a 
three years' stay, and they receive from the fund an allowance of 
£300, say $1500, per year for their maintenance. The purpose of 
the great man who founded this trust was to increase intimate 
and friendly relations between the most highly educated classes 
of the mother country and those of her " giant offspring of the 
West"; and to further a good understanding between the three 
nationalities included in the arrangement, England, Germany and 
the United States. I have met with these Rhodes scholars at 
their annual reunion at Oxford; and I am glad to testify here at 
home to their admirable appearance and conduct, and to the 
favorable opinions of them expressed to me by the Oxford dons 
with whom I conversed. As one saw them together, breaking 
in upon the cloistered quiet of those historic halls, he might al- 
most imagine himself at a big Middle West college in our own 
country. He would scarcely be able to single out the German 
Rhodes scholars from the rest, and quite unable to tell Ameri- 
cans from Australians or Rhodesians or Newfoundlanders or 
Cape Colonists or New Zealanders. But about them all was the 
air of new worlds and a new era. One might almost fancy their 
eyes had already seen the glory of the time when, under the leader- 
ship of the English-speaking peoples, the war drum throbbed no 
longer, and the battle flags were furled, in the parliament of man, 
the federation of the world. 



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